


Braiding: The Only Way To Find True Love.

by Duckseamail



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Don't worry, F/F, Fluff, Hair Braiding, Oblivious Lily, Teen Romance, hopefully it goes well?, im not great at writing romance, kinda., she figures it out by the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckseamail/pseuds/Duckseamail
Summary: Lily wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Maybe that, once she came out and Jess knew that Lily could theoretically like her, that all of a sudden she’d be able to tell if Jess was flirting with her or not. So much for that hope.





	Braiding: The Only Way To Find True Love.

“Here let me braid your hair.”

“No! My hair doesn’t work with braids! It’s too curly!” Jess was smiling at her though, and Lily knew she would let her.

“It will with the style I have in mind.” Lily smiled even wider than she had before when she started laughing. Lily _really_ liked the sound of Jess’s laugh. “Besides, Rose thinks I do a great job whenever she lets me play with _her_ hair. You saw how great it was at James’s graduation.”

“I thought Teddy did it for her,” Jess said, walking over. She poked Lily’s knee before sitting on the floor in front of the common room fireplace.

“Nope.” Lily scooted forwards in her chair, and ran her fingers through Jess’s curly, fluffy hair, pulling it back behind her ears. “Can I go grab your hairbrush from the dorm?” 

“Yeah, ‘course. It’s on top of my dresser.” While Jess was talking, she reached up to move her hair back in front of her face. 

“I’m just going to have to pull it back again if you do that, you know.”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind,” Jess’s face looked a little bit redder than before. Well, they were sitting in front of the fire.

Lily shrugged her shoulders and got up from her seat, moving past her best friend, Mia, who was sitting at a table a little ways off, pretending to be working on her Divination homework. She tried to ignore Mia’s smirk and not-so-subtle thumbs up. 

<~>

Lily took the steps to the fifth-year girl's dorm’s two at a time, as was her habit, and walked to the second door in the small hall. She glanced again at the engraved sign on the door. Her year was one of the largest ones at Hogwarts, and two dorms had been needed for all of the girls, even after Professor Flitwick had enlarged the regular dorm to hold a sixth person.

~ _Rookey Thomas_  
~ _Mia Alderton_  
~ _Lily Potter_  
~ _Lila Eberting_  
~ _Kaya Na_  
~ _Jess Jordan_

It had taken them most of their first year to realize it was in alphabetical order by first name, but backwards. Lily laughed to herself at the memory of Jess bursting into the room, squealing wildly that she had figured it out before the rest of them. Her voice had been so high back then. 

She pushed open the door and skipped across the room to the bed and dresser against the far wall. Her cat, Mushroom, meowed loudly from his place on Lily’s bed. 

“I gave you breakfast already, Mushroom, you don’t need more food now,” her cat just narrowed his eyes and twitched his whiskers. “Listen, I’m just up here to get Jess’s brush. I’m going to braid her hair. And then we’re going to Hogsmeade. With our other friends.” Mushroom’s brown tail flicked to the side. 

Lily ignored him, instead, searching the top of the _very_ cluttered dresser for the hairbrush. She pushed aside a small pride flag. It didn’t do much to help find the brush, but it did remind her of when Jess got it.

It had been so fun. Mia had made plans for all six of them to go to a small pride parade in a tiny Muggle town outside Hogsmeade after Jess had told them all she was Bi. Before that, Lily hadn’t really given much thought to the idea that Jess could like her back. Of course, now that there was hope, Lily couldn’t even bring herself to try and ask her out. She didn’t understand how people like James did it. What if the person -Jess- said _no?_ Of course, Lily would never ask James for advice. She might have asked Albus, but she knew that he would be just as useless. Not because he would tease her, but because he still hadn’t asked Scorpius to go to Hogsmeade or something when it was obvious to anyone with eyes that Albus had liked him since at least his fourth year. 

And yes, Lily was aware of how hypocritical this made her. 

She was scrummaging around on the bedside table when she heard the door squeak open. Lily really needed to remember to set a note out for the House Elves to fix that. She turned around and saw Jess’s curly hair and deep brown face poking in.

“Hi. I just remembered that I left my brush in a drawer, and I didn’t want you to get lost looking through all of my clutter.” She looked around at the area Lily was standing by before stepping the rest of the way into the room. “But I guess I’m a bit too late for that,” She added wryly and closed the door behind her, almost squishing Mushroom, who had decided now would be a good time to abandon Lily. That traitor. She needed the moral support! 

“Ha. Yeah, if you can just grab it, I’m fine with braiding your hair in here instead.” Lily hoped that when she said the words, her voice wasn’t actually as wobbly as it felt. She would be completely alone with Jess in their dorm room. This would be the perfect chance to enact step one of the plan that Lily had just made up on the spot. 

Jess smiled at her and nodded, quickly walking to the dresser and pulling open the top drawer. On a small pile of jumpers, was a hairbrush. “Here we are. I’ll just sit on the floor at the end of a bed since we don’t have any chairs in here...yeah that’ll work.” Lily loved her habit of narrating thoughts out loud.  
She shook her head to clear it when she saw Jess staring up at her from the floor at the foot of Lila’s bed. Right, she’d have to stop spacing if she was going to braid Jess’s hair, come out, _and_ ask if she wanted to go to Hogsmeade all in one morning. 

Lily walked over to the bed, sat on the end of it, and started pulling Jess’s hair back and brushing the snarls out, starting from the bottom. Procrastination? Check. 

“I’ve always found that getting your hair brushed feels so soothing. When my mum would braid my hair when I was super little, I’d even fall asleep.” Jess giggled while saying the last words, and her head moved, jerking the brush hard through the last bit of tangled hair. “Ow!”

“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, honestly.” Lily dropped the brush onto the quilt and fluttered her hands around Jess’s head. 

“Lily! It’s fine! It didn’t hurt that much, it was just surprising! You’re fine.” She turned around and reached up to grab Lily’s hands, holding them still. Lily laughed a little, blushing. She didn’t know what had come over her. She'd braided enough people's hair to know that Jess was right and something like that _wouldn’t_ hurt, but with Jess...it was different. Like something as small as accidentally pulling her hair with a brush would make Jess dislike her. 

“Yeah, I know.” Lily took a deep breath. Calm Down. “I’ll start braiding now, I’ve brushed your hair out enough anyway.” Lily pulled her hands back and started running her fingers through the curls, letting them fall to the sides along Jess’s part. “I was going to make it a half braided crown on top of your head, and then tie it in a bun. That sound good?”

“Brilliant.”

They sat in comfortable silence while Lily focused on starting the braid that would go around from the front of her head to the nape of the neck. Lily was good at this. Hair was _her thing_ , and nothing could go wrong while she was working on hair. It just wasn’t the way of the universe.

Of course, then the universe decided to prove Lily wrong because just as she started on the other braid, the door burst open and Rookey and Kaya ran in. Lily’s hands stilled, and Jess turned to look at two of their friends. They were still in their Quidditch gear and covered in dust and grass-stains. 

Their chatter came to a halt when they saw what Lily was doing. Rookey and Kaya exchanged a _very_ obvious glance that Lily did not like _at all_ , before Jess spoke up from the floor.

“So, how did Quidditch practice go?”

Rookey’s face lit up with a wide smile at the question. Talking about Quidditch was one of her absolute favorite things to do, and normally Lily would be very interested, but she was trying to get something important done, and they were both tracking dirt onto the carpet.

“It was great! Kaya and I are totally awesome co-captains, and even though we had to spend the entire practice training the new beater -you know, Evan from third year- the team got a lot of stuff done.” She looked like she would keep talking about the team all day, but Kaya elbowed her and they exchanged another look. “Anyway, we’re only up here to grab clothes because we forgot and we were going to just hang out in here but then we saw you-” She got another nudge from Kaya. “Anyway, we’ll just leave now. Bye!”

“See you around,” Kaya said with a nod in their direction, before scampering out the door after Rookey and pulling it closed with a slam.

“Well, that was weird. They didn’t even grab their change of clothes. Do you think we should go tell them?”

“No.” Jess looked up at her oddly and Lily hurried to make up an excuse, other than ‘I really like you and need a chance to ask you on a date.’ “I’m still working on your hair. If we get up, it’ll come undone.” 

Jess smiled. “Yeah, we definitely wouldn’t want to have to start over if it comes out.”

Lily’s mind attached to the way she phrased the end of her sentence with laser-focus. Had she done it on purpose? Did she know what was going on? No, that was impossible. It didn’t even have to be a bad thing. Jess had inadvertently given Lily the conversational connection of the topics of braiding and coming out. _Okay, here goes nothing_.

“Hey, Jess, speaking of braids coming out, I-”

 _Wham!_ The door flung open again, hitting the wall loud enough that they both jumped, and Lily lost hold of the end of the braid. Before looking to see who had come barging in, she just stared at the unwinding hair. There had to be a metaphor in there somewhere. Well, after this failed she would have plenty of time to find it.

“Oh. hey guys. I’ll just be a minute, I think I left my phone in here last weekend when we had the slumber party.” It was Gertrude. She was pretty cool and was one of the girls in the extra dorm that had to be put in down the hall.

“Sorry, but...what’s a phone again? And didn’t you say last time you told us what one was, that it doesn’t even work at Hogwarts?” Hopefully, now that Lily had pointed out that it wouldn’t even work once they found it, Gertrude would realize that there wasn’t any point in looking, and leave.

“A phone is a device that...well, it's too hard to explain. I’ll do it later when I have more time-”

“It’s the weekend you have plenty of time,” Jess said, and even though she was absolutely correct, Lily really wished she wasn’t because then Gertrude would have had no reason to continue to interrupt them. 

“No but see when I was at home over holiday break, I was finally able to connect to the internet, ya know the thing I told you about that doesn’t work -or maybe exist, I dunno- at Hogwarts, and I had to try and catch up on _months_ of fanfic. Which is impossible in two and a half weeks, no matter how many all-nighters you pull. Anyway, I had this _ingenious_ idea...Just download all of it! And so I’m in the middle of reading this one work in progress, and even though I can't comment or see if the next chapter is up ‘till Easter, I can at least re-read it! And then move on and read some fluffy one-shots, and even though I was going to only download the new stuff I hadn’t read yet, there was this one super long multi-chap that was a slow burn and had non-cringey smut that I’d read over the summer and bookmarked, so I downloaded that one too, and I have plans to read it after I finish drafting a charms essay...”

At this point, Lily tuned her out. She really liked Gertrude, she was super funny and nice, but she was just going on and on. She had just been about to tell Jess she was lesbian, and now it would feel totally random to bring it up after _that_. Gertrude hadn’t even left yet! Man, this was not going well. The sooner she interrupted the better.

“Couldn’t you have just summoned it? You did do really well when we learned Accio last year.” There, now maybe that would get Gertrude to leave and she could just come out already. Screw setting the mood or shit, dragging out the process like this wasn’t helping with her confidence.

“Oh. Well, I hadn’t really thought of that. I was just anticipating it so much that I kinda forgot I was a witch for a moment.” Gertrude was blushing and tugging at her hair in what was obviously embarrassment, and Lily started to feel bad. But only a little. Luckily, Jess was there to save the day.

“That’s fine Gertrude, it’s really cool how passionate you are about fanfiction. I’ll summon your-” Jess paused a bit with the unfamiliar word and bit her lip. God, she was adorable. “Phone? For you.”

At Gertrude’s nod, she took out her wand from inside her robe pocket and said, loudly and clearly, “ _Accio_ Gertrude Alexander-Gelliman-Fiskar-Blige-Indijog-Affartempaar’s phone” Nothing happened, and for about 15 seconds, in the awkwardly silent dorm room, Lily thought they might actually have to search the entire room and possibly all of Gryffindor tower for Gertrude’s phone-thing. But luckily that didn’t happen because Adrian came walking up to the open door with something clutched in their hand.

“Um, hi.” They nodded at Lily and Jess before turning to face Gertrude. “This came flying from your bed and almost broke my nose on the way out the door. You should be careful when summoning stuff if you don’t know where it is.” And then Adrian tossed the phone at her and walked out, leaving Gertrude looking sheepish.

“Well. Bye, I guess. Thanks for helping find my phone.” Gertrude laughed awkwardly and backed out the door, closing it gently. Lily sighed. At least it was a quieter exit than her entrance had been.

Jess turned to look up at Lily. “Well, I guess you have to re-do the braid now.”

There was something in the way her mouth quirked as she said it that made Lily lose control. She doubled over with hysterical laughter, resting her forehead on Jess’s shoulder, which started shaking with giggles.

“I don’t know why I’m laughing, you worked really hard on that braid!” Jess was gasping for breath, trying to speak around her laughter. 

Maybe it was the odd hilarity of the whole situation that had just happened or stress, but she decided it was now or never. “Jess,” Lily tried and mostly succeeded at getting her laughter under control, “I’m lesbian.” Jess’s shoulders were still shaking a bit, but she wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Ok,” Jess hiccupped, calming down, “Thanks for telling me.”

Lily wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Maybe that, once she came out and Jess knew that Lily could theoretically like her, all of a sudden Lily would be able to tell if Jess was flirting with her or not. So much for that hope.

“I can finish braiding your hair now if you want.” Changing the subject was really the only thing she could think to do. It would probably be better to ask her out when the hairstyle was done anyways. Then there wouldn’t be anything that would keep her in the room if Jess said no.

“Sure, I can’t wait to see how it turns out.” Jess paused after saying that, and it looked to Lily as if she was contemplating something. Before she turned around so Lily could reach her hair, Jess pulled her into a tight squeeze. “But in all seriousness, thank you. It means a lot that you trust me with that part of yourself.” 

Lily could only nod and hug back. Well, at least now the mood was serious enough to ask a serious question. Pulling back from Jess, she thought about what she was about to do. She was going to voluntarily put herself out there, and ask a girl out when she had no hint of an idea what the answer might be. Well, time for that Gryffindor courage and fearlessness that everyone in Lily’s family said she had. Ok. Deep Breaths. Again.

“Do you maybe want to…” Arggh how were you supposed to say this? “...not go to Hogsmeade?” Well, that would have to work, because Lily didn’t know if she could do it again. There was a pause that felt like it went on forever.

“What?”

Damn it.

“Shit, no that isn’t what I meant- I just- what I _meant_ to say was..umm..was, do you want to go to Hogsmeade without our friends. Like a date? If you want to?”

Jess was laughing again and trying to hide it behind her hand. Lily couldn’t help but be disappointed, just the tiniest bit. This awkwardness was bound to happen. Maybe if Jess was laughing while she said it, then the rejection wouldn’t be as bad.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to go to Hogsmeade without our friends.”

“Wait, really? You’d like to?” Lily couldn’t believe her ears. She had agreed to go!

“Well, yeah. I’ve been flirting with you for a while now, but haven’t gotten up the courage to ask you myself.” She tugged at her ear, a nervous habit that Lily knew Jess did so that she wouldn’t bite her nails. “But I guess now I don’t have to!”

Lily could feel the smile growing on her face, and impulsively reached out and pulled Jess into a big hug. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear that!” 

Jess laughed loudly and cheerfully right next to Lily’s ear. Looking over her shoulder, Lily could see the last braid unwinding itself. Well, it looks like what Jess had told her earlier was true. Her hair didn’t work well with braids. At least there’d be plenty of time to practice getting it right before this afternoon.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, that's it. It feels like the ending is lacking something but I can't figure out what. Oh well.
> 
> *clears throat for oscar acceptance speech* First off I’d like to thank my friend Jaraaf for coming up with the name Gertrude Alexander-Gelliman-Fiskar-Blige-Indijog-Affartempaar. I was one name short, so it was a ton of help (sincerely) and really pulled this whole story together ;) So anyway, Jaraaf is writing some really cool stuff, and you should definitely go check it out. Thanks to all of you who’ve read far enough to get to this Author’s Note, please Comment/Kudos, and if you see any mistakes or things that could be written in a better way, please point them out so I can fix them. Have a great day!


End file.
